October 23, 2007

The Kiddie Porn Excuse

by emptywheel

Remember when Alberto Gonzales called for Google to preserve all its search data to support potential child porn investigations? We crazy moonbats suggested that that sounded like an invitation for abuse, that once Google had preserved the records, such records would be accessed for other purposes.

In brief: An incendiary comment appeared on a blog called the Deerfield
Beach Insider -- which uses the Blogger service. (So do I.) The
anonymous "pundit" was upset about alleged corruption at the Public
Works Department. "Nothing will be done until somebody brings in a gun
and shoots up the whole place," he wrote.

Deerfield City Manager
Mike Mahaney took these words as a threat, so he called the Broward
Sherrif's Office. The cops subpoenaed Google (owner of Blogger) and
soon found their man -- a guy named Wayne Adams. He insists that he has
no violent intentions. As it happens, writer Bob Norman is acquainted
with Adams and vouches for his character, although he does not defend
his atrocious choice of words.

So what makes this tale a matter
of national interest? This: When the Broward Sherrif's Office wanted
info from Google, they used a disturbing strategy.

BSO turned to its child porn task force for help.

The
task force, Law Enforcement Against Child Harm (LEACH), is adept at
getting sensitive information on the web. But when deputies subpoenaed
Google for the IP address of the Deerfield Beach Insider commenter, the
heading on the document indicated that the case was part of an ongoing
child porn investigation. The Broward Times' Elgin Jone wrote about the apparent deception Friday after BSO, which had stalled me, finally released the documents.

Now, for the record, I don't believe the proper way to fight corruption is to speak--even hypothetically--of violence breaking out at government agencies. So I'm not so bugged about the investigation into this comment. What bothers me is that law enforcement went to Google and claimed they were investigating kiddie porn, not potential threats of violence and/or political speech.

TrackBack

Comments

Sounds like fruit of the poison tree to me- evidence obtained under false pretenses? If any conviction had come out of this, seems like Mr. Adams would have, at the least, some kind of sec. 1981 "acting under the color of law" claim...

And he still might, if he can show that his name is now falsely associated with kiddie pr0n.

The administration played this one well: no one is FOR kiddie porn so capturing the data is an acceptable act. Internet porn (along with gambling) is a major income source for various 'evil doers' in the black market.

Sometime or another data mining, storage, and interpretation is going to have to be legally addressed: even without probable cause the major search engines are are storing data ready to be served up to whomever wants it. The search engines (IMO), if they want to use public bandwidth, basically have to give law enforcement whatever the enforcers want. FISA was well known and the telcoms knew what they were doing was illegal however, if the search engines do not give the info, the government has shown willingness to flyspec income tax returns and SEC filings, to play hardball as they did with Qwest. It may seem like I am confusing telcoms with search engines: I would argue that their services are bluring. Comcast has a search engine, cable modem, cable tv, telephone capablilities, and I think this is the way of the future. I think that the government treats them the same way, telcom or search engine.

That said, in all practicallity, unless we have a major divestment regulation (break up the majors into their services, which IMO is not going to happen), the real choice is how to regulate law enforcement. Data capture, datamining, data storage, data interpretation, data dispursement, and redress for wrongful uses of any of the above all need to be considered, legislated, enforced, and judicially reviewed.

Shocking! Who could have predicted this would happen? Oh, wait a minute, I did. This is exactly what I have said, so many times I can't count em; it happens literally without fail with cops/law enforcement. Whatever authority they are given, they will first abuse, then flat out exceed. Regrettably, this is not a bug, it is a root feature. This is EXACTLY why the Congressional stroke of genius to let the AG/DOJ audit themselves and make their own "neutral determinations" of propriety on the various wiretapping modalities is so freaking maddening. The fact that this one stop snoop shop is officially called "LEACH" is a wonderful bit of Orwellian irony.

It's always about catching terrorists, perverts and child molesters, I have noticed on CNN lately that they are giving big airplay to captures of alleged child molesters and kiddie porn producers, who if guilty are certainly open to contempt and punishment, but despite the suffering of their victims, are not the biggest threat to the Republic. Having some experience defending people who have been placed in the sex offender or child abuse registry on the basis of suspicion only, without their knowledge or the ability to challenge the designation in a bureaucratic registry, there are likely very many people out there with their names in confidential police files and databases that they were the subject of a kiddie porn investigation. Which could be shared with the TSA, the FBI, foreign governments, the Republican party oppo research groups - talk about a Star Chamber!

I didn't see anything about a subpoena for Adams' web search records. If one was not obtained, it could have been, and there's no reason to believe that it would not have been successful in compelling production of the web search records despite the false pretense, which Google or any other web search company could not have known to be false. That's scary.